As one of my predecessors said, our objective is not to take people to heaven, but to prevent humanity from going to hell.

The drafters of the [Refugee Convention ] had the Cold War in mind and mainly sought to protect a few thousand dissidents from the Communist bloc. They did not envision the mass displacements of people we are seeing today.

We need to ensure the poorest in the planet - who will be hardest hit by the financial crisis - are not forgotten.

One has to have the strength of character to say the time has come to move on... unless you are a king.

The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode . . . .

Justice has taken its course and the authority and legitimacy of the legal process must be respected.

Invite politicians to dinner and let them tell the world how delicious it is. . . . They will proudly go around and say, 'I ate crickets, I ate locusts, and they were delicious.'